VOCJ50

The Varsity Outdoor Club Journal Volume 50
<< VOCJ49	2007-2008	VOCJ51 >>
Jeff Mottershead  Journal Editor

Article	Page	Author(s)	Index
President's Message	1	Kaja Sadowski
Editor's Message	4	Jeff Mottershead
VOC Executive 2007–08	6
Fiftieth-Anniversary Retrospective
Fifty Years of VOC Journalism	19	Karl Ricker
The VOC during World War II and the Postwar Years	25	Tami Knight, in interviews with Gordon Knight and Iola Musfeldt Knight
In Memoriam: Vernon Cuthbert (Bert) Brink (1912–2007)	38	Iola Knight
A First Ascent: The Dirty Nine on Garibaldi	43	Nick Betty
Near Death on Weart?	46	Sev Heiberg
The Saga of the Festering Four	49	Pat Duffy
"Someone's Fallen Off!"	52	Pat Duffy
In Memoriam: Hans Gmoser	54	Duncan McPhedran
VOC Alumni Still Going Strong	56	Barb Smith
Crap Crags: The Beginning	58	Hamish Mutch
Coast Mountain Trilogy	63	Dick Culbert
Veeocee Mountain	75	Roland Burton
How MEC Was Born	78	Roland Burton
Sphinx Camp and the Smell of Screen	81	Helen Lemon-Moore
In Memoriam: Dave Waldichuk	87	Helen Lemon-Moore
In Memoriam: Julian Harrison	88	Helen Lemon-Moore, with files from David Lemon
The Golden T-Shirt	90	Anita Miettunen
Hey Dude, Time to Earn Some Turns in Cali	96	Denise Hart
In Memoriam: Brian Waddington	104	Denise Hart
Memories of Brian, Janet, and John and the Talchako Horseshoe Ski Traverse	107	Betsy Waddington
Valley Boy	112	Drew Brayshaw
In Memoriam: Rob Driscoll	117	Bruce Fairley
Walk On	122	Blair Hammond
Wide Angle: A Karakoram Confession	127	Jeremy Frimer
The Great Unknown	140	Mike Hengeveld
Climbing with a Sweaty Bag	152	Mike Hengeveld
What the Government Really Wants to Say When It Gets a Letter from a VOC Member	158	Matthias Jakob
My Favourite VOC Traditions	161	Matt Gunn
The Delicate Art of Bailing	168	Cam Shute
Ice Climbing with a Retarded Mojo	171	Kelly Franz
Authors in Our Midst	175	Iva Cheung
Ninety Years of the Varsity Outdoor Club	180	Duncan McPhedran
Grad News 2007–08	191	Christian Champagne and VOC alumni
Skiing
The World's Longest Spearhed Traverse, or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Hate My Downmat	227	Scott Webster
Escape from Garibaldi	234	Christian Veenstra
Decision to Descend	240	Samantha Brett (VOCO)
The Bonnington Traverse	248	Madeleine Martin-Preney
Intro to Backcountry (And a Few Extras)	254	Bob Lai and Michael Kaye
New Year's at Phelix: Shredding Gnar and Naked Foolery	262	Emma Vardy-Bragg
Going for Glory on Norske	265	Gili Rosenberg
The Telemark Journey	271	Stuart Masterman
How to Fix Telemark Bindings	274	Stephen Mullen
Cragging
Europa: Route Cleaning the Painful Way	283	Jeff Mottershead
How to Install a Gasoline-Powered air Compressor 200 m Up a Rock Face	294	Matthew Carroll
Siwash under a Full Moon	301	Natalie Stafl
Aid Climbing in Squamish with Jeff	303	Dorota Palaczek
When in Doubt: Twin Mini-Epics on the Squamish Chief	306	Nick Waber
Climbing in Smith Rock	320	Christian Sampaleanu
Climbing Trip to Skaha, May 2007	326	Dorota Palaczek
Saving the Skaha Bluffs	330	Christian Sampleanu
Alpine Climbing
Escape from Sampson	339	Matthew Breakey
Adventures in Salal Creek	346	Richard So
Paddling @ Altitude: Mountaineering Camp 2007	354	Piotr Forysinski
East Face of Mount Garibaldi in the Summer	359	Evan Morris
Cost of a Trip to the Tantalus Range	364	Urszula Palaczek and Dorota Palaczek
Bugaboo Firsts	366	Kaja Sadowski
Four Unemployed Climbing Bums Spend Time in the Mountains, July 24–27, 2007	373	Richard So
The First Free Ascent of Mount Queen Bess's Southeast Ridge, August 7, 2007	380	Peter Hudson
Adventures Abroad
Mining in Zambia	385	Michael Fuller
Solo in Eastern Africa	387	Michael Fuller
A Good Time and Bad Pun	397	Natalie Stafl
Thoughts on the Adventurous Spirit	401	Emily Beach
Engulfed by a Hippo	404	Natalie Stafl
Land and Water
Canadian Surf Culture	411	Anton Bezglasnyy
Beginner-Friendly Edible Wilds	416	Meghan Anderson
Cycling the Kettle Valley Railway	419	Maya Goldstein
The Spearhead Traverse in a Day	425	Stuart Masterman
Craving British Columbia's Mountains	428	Julie Valk
Haida Gwaii Story	432	Vincent Johnson
Kayaking in the Gulf Islands	445	Bob Lai
Club Life
VOC Photo Contest 2007–08	452
The VOC: Just for Fun	459	Dan Eagen
VOCO Rundown 2007–08	462	Kaitlyn Bausler
VOC Banquet 2007	469	Christian Champagne
Longhike 2007	473	Ben Singleton-Polster
Shannon Falls: A Poem about Longhike	475	Brian Magahay
Etymology and Indiana Jones: Winter Longhike 2008	478	Sophia Toft Moulton
Becoming Consciously Incompetent: Avalanche Course 2008	483	Eric Escobar
Tele School	488	Matthew Bakier
Recipe for Brewberry Pie	491	Meghan Anderson
Recreational Disorder Profiles: Hyperbaragnosia Nervosa	494	Frances Sharpe
The Delicate Art of Female Urination: Ten Tips on Going Pee in the Backcountry	498	Krystil Koethler
The Roland Burton Beginner-Friendliness Award	501	Sandra Nicol
Quartermaster's Report	507	Andrew Silversides
Phelix Creek and the State of Backcountry Recreation	511	Sandra Nicol
Harrison Hut, the Mineral Tenure Act, and You	515	Peter Hudson
Journal Awards	519	Jeff Mottershead
Index	521

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The 2007–2008 issue of the VOCJ will mark the fiftieth anniversary of the journal. In celebration the journal will be bigger (higher page count) and brighter (more colour pages) and will feature a retrospective section including articles by alums, spotlights on some gems from the archives, and profiles of key figures and events in VOC history. We'll send free copies out to all contributing alums and advertisers. This issue will take more resources (human and monetary) to put together, so we'll need a lot of help. Here's how you can contribute:

Contributing to VOCJ 50

Submit an article

• Deadline: Monday, February 11, 2008
• Remember: each submission counts as a workhike
• You can write about anything related to the outdoors—preferably involving some sort of self-propelled activity. Ideally an article would be 500–2000 words. E-mail it to Jeff Mottershead as a .doc, .rtf, or .txt attachment. Don't forget to include a title.
• If possible, submit photos (in as high a resolution as possible—preferably 300 dpi or better) to accompany your article. Please include a short descriptive caption and a photo credit. Photos should be TIFFs, JPEGs, PNGs or EPSs and sent as separate attachments.
• Before submitting, read over your article and at least spellcheck it. Although your article will be edited, you'll endear yourself to the editor if you make it as painless as possible to clean up.
• If you'd like to write something but don't have any ideas, consider signing up for one of the articles in the list below.

Submit photos

• Colour photos should in TIFF, JPEG, or EPS format, in as high a resolution as possible. Include a descriptive caption and a photo credit. Either e-mail the photos to Jeff or send him a link to the specific images in the photo gallery. (He and the designer will ignore any submissions consisting of "Just use any of the photos in my album" or any similarly vague requests.)

Suggest advertisers

Although part of the budget is allocated to the journal, we still have to cover part of the printing and distribution costs by selling ads. We'd like to support local businesses (including those in Squamish and Whistler and other places VOCers frequently visit) that share the VOC's philosophy of access and sustainability. If you can think of any appropriate businesses or organizations we could approach, let Jeff know. Better yet, if you have a direct contact at those organizations, Jeff will send you a media kit with our ad rates to pass along to the potential advertiser.

Suggest alums we can profile or contact to write an article

Champagne is trying to track down some of the old-timey VOCers for retrospectives, but if you have specific alums in mind we can talk into contributing to the issue or alums (or historic VOC events) we might want to profile, please post their names below. If you're also a member of another outdoor organization that is likely to have a few VOC alumni, and you have the capability of putting out a broadcast soliciting potential writers, drop Jeff Mottershead a note.

• -Hans Gmoser, Honourary VOC member. Obituary, Died May 2007. I would be happy to write this. -Duncan
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Suggest current VOCers we should harass for articles

Did you read a particularly entertaining trip report that might make a good article? Post the author and trip below. Serious suggestions only, please—no one needs to see the Waddington collage again...

• Name, trip (date)
• -
• -

Skim the archives for our retrospective vignettes

Peppered throughout VOCJ 50 will be a series of 200-word extracts from previous issues of VOCJ. We need help populating these "From the Archives" sidebars—the journal will have about fifteen of them. If you're willing to skim through a few back issues of VOCJ for funny, historic, or heroic quotes we can use, sign up below. If you find an appropriate quote in an old issue of VOCJ, photocopy the relevant page(s), highlight the passage, make sure the photocopy has the writer's name and issue number, then drop the page off in Jeff's mailbox. Since we want to get this part of the journal out of the way early, the deadline for submissions is January 15, 2008.

• Name (Issue(s))
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Sign up for one of these stories

If you have an original idea for an article, write that up and submit that first. If you don't have any ideas or have already submitted an article and are hankerin' to do more writing, consider writing about one of the topics below. This is a bit of an experiment to see if we can encourage submissions, cover key VOC events, and avoid getting, like, fourteen articles about longhike, say.

If someone's already signed up for something you want to write about, you can get in touch with that person—if your articles are significantly different, or if you agree to collaborate, you can sign up as well. (This list is not exhaustive and is constantly being updated. Check back frequently.)

Topic (Name)

• Glacier school 2007
• Longhike 2007: Ben Singleton-Polster
• Climbing trip to Skaha 2007 - Dorota
• Climbing trip to Smith Rock 2007
• New Year's at Phelix 2008: Emma V-B
• Winter Longhike 2008
• Avalanche course 2008: Eric Escobar
• Advanced Avalanche course 2008
• Skaha access fund—history and progress: Christian Sampaleanu
• VOC Awards 2006–2007: Champagne (Article about the Banquet)
• The delicate art of female urination in the great outdoors: Krystil
• Authors in our midst—VOC alums that have gone on to write seminal outdoor stories or guidebooks (with cover images): Iva Cheung
• VOC-Okanagan dispatch
• The history of Veeocee Mountain: Roland Burton
• The fight for Phelix Creek—history and progress
• Veenstra's Brohm Ridge—Mt. Price Gong Fiesta
• SAR—any past or current VOCers volunteers for search and rescue? Have stories?
• The VOCers handbook (abridged). À la Official Preppy Handbook or Hipster Handbook.

FAQs

* When should I submit my article?
If it's ready now, by all means, submit it now. Otherwise you have until February 11, 2008, but the earlier you submit, the better. Any articles submitted later than the deadline will not make it into the journal.
* How many articles can I submit?
Well, try to submit one, at least. Submit as many articles as you'd like, but if you send in more than two, be prepared to have some of your articles cut, since we'd like everyone to have an opportunity to have an article printed.
* How do I submit articles and photos?
Send them to Jeff Mottershead as attachments. Be sure to include your full name somewhere, either in the body of the e-mail or in the article itself, especially if you have a cryptic username like jizzmonkey69.
* How does a VOCJ article differ from a trip report?
A trip report can be a VOCJ article, but a VOCJ article needn't be a trip report. And rather than just copying and pasting your TR into a file and submitting it, you could make the editor happy by making sure that the article is coherent and has a clear beginning and conclusion.
* Does my story have to be an epic?
Not at all. A good journal article will inform or entertain—perhaps both—and although epics are natural fodder for entertaining stories, trip stories where everything goes smoothly can be just as fresh and edifying. Conversely, an epic, poorly written up, does not a good article make.
* What will you do to my article once I submit it?
The editor will fact-check proper names and edit the article for spelling (per Canadian Oxford Dictionary), grammar, style (per Chicago Manual), usage, and clarity. He may also suggest structural changes (moving paragraphs around) for better flow and cuts for length and conciseness. If necessary the editor will also eliminate libel and other inappropriate content.
* How will the editing process work?
The copy editors will edit your article electronically and send it back to you, with queries if something needs to be clarified. You'll have three days to go over the edited article and return it to the editor. Please don't rewrite the article at this stage—only answer the queries and make changes just to correct an outright error.
* Will you crop my photos?
The designer may have to crop your photos to fit, yes. If you want to insist that your image not be cropped, submit it with your desired crop and specify in the body of the e-mail to which the image is attached that you don't want it cropped. We'll do our best to accommodate your wishes. Note that all photos submitted will more likely than not be resized.
* What resolution do the photos have to be?
Photos that accompany an article should be at least 300 dpi at 4.5 inches (11.5 cm) wide. Stand-alone photos for the colour sections should be at least 300 dpi at about 6 inches (15.25 cm) wide. However, when you submit your photos, simply submit them in as high a resolution as possible and let the designer worry about converting them. You can lose photo quality if you convert them improperly or save them in an inappropriate format.
* Can I submit photos with nudity or use swear words in my article?
This year's editor is a bit of a dirtball, so to expect the journal to be devoid of nudity would be being a bit delusional. However, the journal will be going out to some respectable types, so the decorum should be kept somewhat high. Decorum is kind of relative, though, so in short: tasteful nudity only. And make sure that all parties in the photo (nude or not) have given you permission to reproduce their image in a publication that will be archived for posterior. Er, posterity. As for swear words, some epics are definitely expletive-worthy, and the editor's not out to censor anyone. But, as with any (ahem) literary device, if you abuse expletives they'll lose their impact. Use only what you need to get your point across.

VOCJ 50 Style sheet

This is just for reference. If you're a kind soul you'll try to follow it, but if you don't, it's fine. The copy editors will fix inconsistencies in editing. But if you try to dispute an editorial decision that's specified on this style sheet, the style sheet will win.

• use Canadian spelling (per Canadian Oxford Dictionary)
• use series comma
• use active voice whenever possible
• avoid using "this" and "that" as pronouns rather than demonstrative adjectives
• don't use emoticons and gratuitous exclamation points. If you do they will be unceremoniously eliminated
• give full names in the first mentions of any people in your article
• give full names for the first mentions of any potentially unfamiliar acronyms
• use single spaces after all punctuation
• use metric units; or at least give a metric conversion to any imperial units you use
• spell out numbers from one to one hundred and all higher round numbers consisting of two words or fewer (e.g., "fourteen thousand"); use numerals for everything else, and use a comma in figures with four or more digits. (e.g., 2,568). Exception: use numerals when using decimals, metric units (e.g., 400 m, 30 km), and percentages (e.g., 28 per cent—note that "per cent" is spelled out as two words)
• it's "gaiters," kids—not "gators." Unless you're actually talking about alligators.